Mona Arshi is a poet and writer. She previously worked as a Human Rights Lawyer. Her debut collection Small Hands(Pavilion Poetry, 2015) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2015. Her second collection Dear Big Godswas published in April 2019 (Pavilion Poetry). Mona is co-editor of an anthology, Nature Matters, published by Faber in May 2025. Her third collection of poetry Mouthwas published by Chatto and Windus in July 2025.
Her poems and interviews have been published in The Times,The Guardian, Granta and The Timesof India, as well as on the London Underground. During 2021 Mona was poet in residence in a bird sanctuary in Cley Marshes, Norfolk.
Her debut novel,Somebody Loves You, was published in 2021 by And Other Stories. It was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Jhalak Prize, and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Sophie Gallagher was Deputy Lifestyle Editor at The Independent for two years until September 2021. Before that she spent three years as a journalist at HuffPost UK. She was voted the Lifestyle Journalist Of The Year at the most recent Words By Women awards. From 2017-2019, Sophie ran an editorial campaign to criminalise cyber flashing – the unsolicited sending of sexual images – which the Law Commission recommended the UK government do, crediting Sophie’s work.
Sophie is now a freelance feature writer and editor based in London working for the BBC, i, Independent, Grazia, and others, and is a magazine tutor on the Press Association NCTJ diploma. She is regularly asked to write op-eds on VAWG and is a commentator on radio and TV on this subject. Her first book, How Men Can Help, is an urgent look at the state of men’s violence against women in the UK, and was published by Wellbeck in July 2022.
Kanya D’Almeida is a Sri Lankan writer. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, Jaggery and The Bangalore Review. She is the recipient of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and her flash fiction is anthologized in Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press, 2021). She received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her essays and nonfiction have appeared on The Margins, Al Jazeera and Truthout, among others. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories.
Her latest book, I Am Maroon: The True Story of An American Political Prisoner(Basic, 2024), is a cinematic memoir of justice and redemption that traces a former Black Panther’s tumultuous life from gang member to Black liberation leader.
Saraid de Silva is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Her debut novel, Amma, was published in Australia and New Zealand by Moa Press, part of Hachette Aotearoa, and in the UK by Weatherglass Books in 2024. In 2023 she was selected for Art Omi’s international writers residency in Columbia County, New York, and in 2025 she will be the New Zealand writer-in-residence at Randell Cottage in Wellington. Amma was long listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for fiction, part of the New Zealand book awards, and the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2025.
Simukai Chigudu is associate professor of African politics at the University of Oxford and fellow of St. Antony’s College. Originally from Zimbabwe, he moved to the UK to complete his secondary and university education. He has an eclectic professional and academic background, having studied African history and politics, public health and medicine. Before coming into academia, he worked in the NHS for three years. He is also one of the founding members of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, and has become a leading voice in public debates on the cultural politics of colonialism and racism.
His academic monograph, The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), won the prestigious Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award. He is now writing his first trade book Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire, which will be published by The Bodley Head in the UK and Crown in the US. It combines memoir, political history and cultural criticism to show how colonialism continues to shape politics, society and culture in Africa and in Britain and to explore what it really means to decolonise.
Dr. Lexi Stadlen is a writer, anthropologist and ethnographer. With a PhD in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics, she spent two and a half years living in India, conducting research on the intimate lives of women. In 2019 she won the Bayly prize, awarded by the Royal Asiatic Society for an outstanding thesis on an Asian topic completed at a British university in the preceding year.
Her first book, Nine Paths, a narrative nonfiction account of the stories of nine women in an Indian village, was published by Chatto & Windus in April 2022. She is now based in Dubai with her husband and son.
Amber Husain is a writer based in South London, UK. She is the author of Meat Love (Mack, 2023) and Replace Me (Peninsula Press, 2021). Her essays on politics, literature and art have been published in Granta, the LRB, New Left Review, The White Review, Baffler, The Believer, LA Review of Books and New York Times Magazine.
She is currently completing a PhD at UCL on art and mind-body medicine in early neoliberal Britain, and she teaches history of art, creative writing and criticism. She has previously worked as a university research fellow, as a book editor, and as a magazine co-editor.
Her third non-fiction book, Tell Me How You Eat, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann (UK) and Atria Books (USA).
James Wythe is a food blogger and heath coach who taught himself to cook when he became seriously ill with M.E. and ended up being bed bound for two years. His recipes are simple, accessible and cater to all sorts of different health needs.
His first recipe book, Healthy Living James, sold to Headline at auction and was published in March 2022. Jam-packed with 80 easy, healthy recipes, this cookbook is for anyone who is suffering ill health, has food allergies, is totally new to cooking, or simply lacks time.
Each recipe is: gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, mainly plant-based (but it’s easy to add meat or fish), simple to follow, affordable and easy to adapt with ingredient swaps. With ideas for breakfast and brunch, on-the-go lunches, batch cooking, store cupboard meals and week-night dinners, there will be something for everyone.
Simon Lancaster is one of the world’s top speechwriters. He first started writing speeches for Cabinet Ministers in Tony Blair’s Government in the late 1990s and he’s since gone on to write speeches for some of the biggest business leaders in the world, including the CEOs of Unilever, InterContinental Hotels and HSBC.
He has written three best-selling books on communication including Speechwriting: The Expert Guide(Hale, 2010), Winning Minds: Secrets from the Language of Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and You Are Not Human: How Words Kill (Biteback, 2018). He lectures at Cambridge University, is an Executive Fellow of Henley Business School and his 2016 Speak Like A Leader TEDx talk has received almost 4 million views.
His latest book, Connect, was published by Heligo Press in 2022 and explains that the secret of brilliant communication is all down to making connections.
K Patrick is a writer based in Scotland. Their work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry Review, Grantaand Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize in 2021, the same year that K was also shortlisted for The White Review’s Short Story Prize. In 2023 they were shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award.
Their debut novel, Mrs S, published by Fourth Estate (UK) and Europa (US) was selected as an ObserverBest Debut of the Year, and K was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelists for 2023. Their debut poetry collection, Three Births, was published by Granta Poetry. It was longlisted for the 2024 Laurel Prize and shortlisted for Scotland’s National Book Awards. Their piece ‘Walk’ was selected for the Forward Book of Poetry 2025.
